What is the BEST Moral Argument for God?

hello welcome to capturing christianity my name is cameron bertuzzi if you don't know that by now today i'm joined by dr william lane craig and dr david baggett we're talking about moral arguments and in particular we're asking what is the best moral argument in reality what we're going to do is we're going to help you understand the broader dialectic of moral arguments there's not just one version of a moral argument there's many different versions and so what we're going to do today is talk about those different versions and yeah just broaden your horizons with the moral argument there's a lot more to the moral argument that you may not be aware of so let me just quickly introduce my guest and then we'll get rolling here dr william lane craig if you don't know is an american analytic philosopher and christian theologian apologist and author he's professor of philosophy at houston baptist university and research professor of philosophy at talbot school of theology he also runs reasonable faith that website reasonablefaith.org is linked in the description of this video dr baggett dr david baggett is currently a professor of philosophy and director at the center for moral apologetics at houston baptist university we'll talk about uh houston baptist university more in just a second with his co-author jerry walls dr baggett authored good god the theistic foundations of morality in 2016 he published a sequel with walls that critiques naturalistic ethics god and cosmos moral truth and human meaning and a third book in the series the moral argument a history that was published in 2019 chronicles the history of moral arguments for god's existence dr baggett i understand that you have you're under contract for a fourth book oh that's right we're working on a book defending moral realism and we'll really be getting to writing in earnest on that this summer so looking forward to that that's excellent well i mentioned houston baptist university earlier and so what we're doing this stream today is actually in conjunction with them uh dr craig and dr david baggett are teaching a class together at houston baptist university where there's it's a it's a class where they're studying the moral argument it's a two-week intensive course they meet mondays through fridays three to five pm uh and this is may 17 through 28 2021. so the course will meet on campus in houston uh but it will also it will also be meet uh meeting remotely via zoom so anyone in the world can sign up and attend this class if you want to learn more about the moral argument and go really in depth because today we've only got about an hour to get a kind of overview of these topics but in this class you can go one on one with these professors and you can just learn a whole lot more than you can in something like a a one-hour lecture on youtube um so the prices and this is all in the description of the video if you're interested to uh 280 dollars for early bird and 300 after the class begins so i've got a link in the description of this video if you would like to attend the class click the link sign up and register and you can be part of that so uh david is there anything that you would like to to add about the course or anything else just that i think it's going to be a really neat opportunity for folks for folks to study the moral argument and depth and staying with dr craig oh my goodness i'm excited about it for that reason myself i think it's going to be a great uh great time the first week dr craig will be in charge the second week i'll take over so that's how it's going to go there you go so as i mentioned if you're interested in being part of the class or sitting in on it you can click the link in the description this video all right with that let's get into the topic for today's video which is we're gonna we're gonna survey some of the different arguments some of the different moral arguments uh that have been offered over you know centuries so uh why don't we start uh david give us because you just finished your book in 2019 on the history of the moral argument maybe you'd be the the person to go to here when was the first one offered that you found in your research well yeah well dr craig himself says something like the essential idea of the moral argument you can you can trace all the way back to someone like plato actually uh but in the western world we typically tend to look at someone like emmanuel kant as the first really major moral apologist but there were some precursors uh to him like like reed and locke and others and but uh kant is often uh thought of as like the most significant first major explicit moral apologist and then it goes on from there excellent well why don't we talk about some of the different versions of the moral argument that have that have come up and then we'll talk about some of the drawbacks and the benefits of of each of them uh where should we how should we begin here i'm okay with either one of you guys taking the lead at this point well let me say that in my work i have defended two versions of the argument the first is the deductive argument that i present in my debate with the humanist philosopher paul kurtz at franklin and marshall college on the topic is goodness without god good enough and that's the traditional way that i give the argument uh premise one would be if god does not exist then objective moral values and duties do not exist and here i appeal to the atheistic tradition of thinkers like nietzsche russell and sartre and then the second premise is that objective moral values and duties do exist appealing to our moral experience of values and moral obligations from which it then follows logically that god exists and i like this deductive formulation of the argument because it's so simple it's so clear that it's easy for audiences to grasp when they hear it orally the other version of the argument that i presented is the one inspired by dave baggett's work which is an inference to the best explanation and i used this version of the argument in my more recent debate with eric wielenberg at north carolina state on is the foundation of moral values supernatural or natural and in this version of the argument one takes it for granted that objective moral values and duties do exist this is a given and this version was particularly appropriate with eric wheelenberg because even though wheelenberg is a naturalist he is uh firmly committed to the objectivity of moral values and duties and so the question that faced us was not our moral values and duties objective but rather what's the best explanation and so i argued for the superiority of a theistic grounding for values and duties as opposed to wielenberg's theory called normative atheistic realism and so those would be two versions of the argument that i have myself defended but dave knows vastly more about this subject than i do uh it's a privilege to be on this podcast with someone who i think probably knows more about the moral argument than anybody else alive well dr craig i didn't want to make you feel bad i was going to say david is probably the four the world's foremost expert on the moral argument and he he's shaking his head here because he's so humble but this is this is can't believe i can't believe dave that you've written a tetralogy on this i mean that's that's a monumental achievement oh well i appreciate it jerry and i have a lot of fun with the project and um there's just so much uh richness to to explore with this stuff you know i mean it really is just such a wonderful topic uh thanks for all those compliments and thanks of course for inordinately elevating expectations so that i can make them all come down um it's a privilege for me to be to be here with you guys so uh yeah so if if i could uh continue on then with what dr craig was talking about i think dr craig has done more than just about anybody uh drawing attention to moral apologetics and the moral argument and uh i know it's not necessarily your favorite argument dr craig i think that's the cosmological argument probably that's the one that you've really devoted so much to but you have said interestingly that when you've gone to college campuses uh it's the moral argument often that's the most effective at persuasion i i find that fascinating yeah so yeah that's exactly right dave it's the one that students really connect with uh because as i've said you can get away with denying that the universe began to exist this isn't going to affect your life but every day you get up you answer the question do other people have intrinsic moral worth by how you behave how you treat others so this is an argument that is existentially unavoidable and therefore very powerful yeah that's exactly how i see it and i think it's one of the reasons why it's particularly well uh suited to serve as a as a prelude for proclamation of the christian gospel i mean it gets you right there that there is this standard of which we all fall short and then something has to be put put into place to address that we need forgiveness we need transformation you know and ultimately if there's anything like uh hope for uh you know complete transformation uh we need we need the worldview resources to make sense of those things so yeah well i love the moral argument and by the way it's a it's a big reason why i'm here at houston baptist some years ago i wrote the president here dr robert sloan about the possibility of starting the center for moral apologetics that cameron mentioned and the idea was to have a place carved out at a university like this one that could become sort of the hub of cutting-edge work and research on various aspects of the moral argument and it really is a job for a community and not just a single person or two there's so much so much great work to be done and we thought this would be an ideal place to do it very exciting things were already happening here with with apologetics and dr sloan was excited when he heard about the center and said he'd really like to do it here as soon as it became practicable and then this last summer it finally happened so very very happy to be here also by the way in conjunction with the center that we're starting here guys uh there's going to be a certificate in moral apologetics offered starting summer after this one uh where it'll be two courses one summer and then two courses the next summer and uh we'll really have an opportunity uh to to delve into the intricacies and various facets of moral apologetics we're really looking forward to wow so why don't we build out the case or look at some of the the other i think in what you do because you you've already dr craig you've already kind of talked about the there's the deductive form of the argument where you've got the conditional premise uh if god does not exist then moral values and duties don't exist but they do exist so therefore god exists that's the deductive form of the argument but then david he's very very uh fond of the abductive version which says that god is the best explanation of various moral phenomena is that the term that you would use yeah so yeah so that second uh version of the moral argument that dr craig has advanced the abductive version and i loved how he you used i loved how you used that with dr rielenberg dr craig i thought that was uh marvelous and it was brilliant and uh just a really really neat uh thing to see yeah so the the deductive version is i agree it's powerful it's succinct it's pithy i mean you know you can commit it to memory you can have it good to go and in a debate setting often times it's the best way to go probably because of time constraints and all of that and you have a you know you have a deductively valid argument so there's nothing uh questionable about that and then it just becomes a matter of defending the premises it's it's brilliant and like i say i think it's uh done as much as anything or anyone to really draw people's attention to the moral arguments i have just such great respect for you and appreciation for you along those lines the uh yeah the abductive approach is just another way to kind of couch or formulate the argument and this is one way in which by the way i think we can point to diversity among moral arguments and there'll be another way i'll get to in a moment but this is in terms of the logical structure you can use a deductive version like dr craig's uh you could also twirl it around and put it into a modus ponens form if you want uh too and that would be a rather uh a rather similar logical kind of approach that would have a lot of potential but then there's an abductive approach i'm going to tell you something dr craig i've never told you before do you know who got me excited about abduction years ago it was you i yes you you gave a podcast on the resurrection and you laid it out using uh abducted terms and it was a thing of beauty i was mesmerized and after that i i myself started to think uh about the moral argument in those uh in those terms and it's always funny to me because some of my students uh think that you know they'll say uh well you like the abductor version but i like dr craig and he likes the deductive version so i like to deduct a version better which i completely respect um but but of course these things aren't in competition at all and a lot depends on the right the context that you find yourself in and the particular people with whom you're having the conversation and so forth but yeah in an abductive approach cameron you you start say say with the objective moral values and duties that's a great place to start and you might just choose one or the other objective moral values or objective moral duties uh or both um and there are other possibilities too and that gets to that second point that i said i'll i'll bring up in another second so let me hold off on that but then you you start without a sort of axiomatic right and so if you're having a conversation with someone uh with whom those sorts of notions resonate and come alive and speak to those uh people then you can initiate a conversation about well what is it that we need to really explain these things in a robust sort of way right and ultimately you want to answer the question you know what's the best explanation but you can even just start with what what is needed for a good explanation a decent explanation a robust explanation in the first place and then kind of inch your way toward that ultimate conclusion but you don't have to be in any rush and by the way i think with respect to the evidence being considered say like objective moral values and duties it does great good in these conversations with our interlocutors to spend time talking about exactly what it is that we mean by these things and then if you don't do that you know one of the dangers that you're susceptible to is uh reinforcing the idea with whoever it is you're talking with that they can just think about it for a second get a beat on it and and then start talking about it authoritatively without really having come to terms with the nature of the evidence one of the things that i saw when i did the history of the moral argument was that these were folks for the most part by sorely and a taylor and john henry newman all these various guys they spent a lifetime considering the moral evidence in great detail they really lived with you know these arguments and these ideas and there really is a lifetime if not in uh in eternity for us to ponder these ideas they're very rich concepts ultimately you know it's nothing less than the very character of god so uh get people to be attentive to the evidence i always suggest uh and that that will at least help them perhaps uh shy away from the knee-jerk and of deflationary analyses that ex explains away these concepts as well as it explains them so so you start with something like objective moral values and duties and then you know you have uh principled reasons to identify uh what constitutes a good explanation right so how many of these phenomena are explained how well are they explained how well did the explanations cohere with our background assumptions and how uh ad hoc are the explanations of course the less ad hoc the better and so forth and so on you know the standard criteria for assessing the quality of these sorts of arguments and then and then you argue that a theistic explanation various respects can better explain more deeply explain uh the the the existence and the nature of such things as objective moral values and duties so so for example with duties there's a kind of authority that most of us are inclined to think that moral obligations possess where does that authority come from we can deduce say instrumental reasons to perform a particular behavior or to refrain from performing a particular behavior we can do that all the day long we haven't yet accounted for any kind of deep sense of authority so if authority is indeed a salient feature of moral duties then we need to spend time laying that out making it clear that's what's in need of explanation not slapping the word beauty on something and saying there you go i've just explained it you know i use it in that way other people agree with me what's the challenge you're only going to feel the force of the argument if you spend enough time really with with the evidence and allowing it to work on you by the way one last image i'll share my friend uh jonathan pruitt he's my managing editor at moral apologetics.com and a great guy but he says sometimes yeah the moral argument you that you give it was kind of like a a snake and it uh first it kind of gradually kind of wound its way around me and then then it started to tighten and more time it tightened some more and some more but but he lived with the argument you see he did exactly the kind of thing that we're hoping to do at the center of houston baptist inviting people in to work together and collaboratively to live with these arguments and really probe in depth the richness of these topics what really opened my mind to the abductive form of the argument and and this just the value of it i was listening to it was a podcast that you've that you've got speaking of moral apologetics.com you guys have a podcast that's excellent i doubt you had this pod i forget what the name of it was but i think it was something like four i don't know four things that the i don't know there's there's different aspects of morality uh beyond just moral values and duties which is the formulation that i think most people are familiar with or the moral data that most people are familiar with when we're thinking of a moral argument is moral values and duties but in this talk in this podcast you referenced other things like world transformation and uh there's there's other moral phenomena that is in need of explanation not just moral duties or moral values and that to me just kind of blew my mind it opened me up to really appreciating the fact that there's other things about morality that could potentially point to the existence of god so that that was a whole build up to this question that i've got for you david is what is your favorite aspect or what which aspect of morality do you think most clearly points to the existence of god or is best explained by theism yeah that's very tricky uh you know because i i and maybe i'm wrong but i can't help but but see all of the various disparate parts um working together in in tandem and and so um i kind of want to say it's the cumulative effect of all of these things um but i don't know if that's a cheat i don't know if i'm being uncooperative and answering the question that way but but i really mean it you know for example uh dr craig mentioned like they say the intrinsic value of persons now to me that this is a a really powerful aspect of the values discussion and and something that i i really think does a point to god's existence uh you know how there are different approaches right so you know you're presuppositionless that's kind of like deductivism on steroids it seems to me like this it absolutely entails this you know you can't help but get to the you know maybe they're right for all i know but i i i don't find it personally dialogically to be the best approach but then you can try to a more deductive approach and just say well you know like the the the the uh the only real explanation here something like like this really i mean if you if you think about it like theism and then an abductive approach but you also have something you might say that's even less ambitious like like steve evans talks about natural signs and the intrinsic value of persons is one of the things that he points to as a natural sign which he says doesn't entail god's existence but it sort of gestures toward it you know and it's potentially uh potentially in principle open to various defeaters so you know you have to have these discussions uh but but it gestures in the direction toward god the reason why i i i'm drawn to even something like like that as as a lead to something like a strong entailment notion is because that what that enables you to do is say okay just like in classical apologetics uh you you can consider the teleological argument maybe the ontological argument and the cosmological argument the moral argument and other arguments and put them all together into a cumulative case that's stronger right than any of the individual parts in a similar sort of way it seems to me with respect to morality you can construct a cumulative moral argument you see and that's what i that's what i aim to do so uh i kind of start with dr craig starks i think that's uh in terms of metaphysics i think that's really the the key place to start what are these key moral phenomena key moral facts and need a robust explanation objective moral values and duties is a is an impeccable way to capture that notion so i often will start start there and then if you wish to extend the discussion and of course depending on who you're talking to uh there are different ways ways to do this and by the way this pertains to that second point from earlier that i promised so now i'm there uh you could also talk about say moral rights where do those come from and of course they're probably very closely linked with objective moral duties aren't they you could talk about another metaphysical issue of moral freedom right the requisite freedom that we require as human beings to make culpable decisions and what's going to best account for that a theistic picture or say a physicalist or mechanistic picture of human beings you could talk about moral regrets like william james does and how they don't really fit very well into a naturalistic uh picture right you can talk about moral knowledge and there are examples of uh epistemic moral arguments that various people give like angus manujin angus ritchie and um others um richard swinburne even who's often skeptical about moral arguments but that that version of the argument he likes and of course you can also talk about yet other aspects of morality like the rationality of morality if ultimately the happy art the holy right there's a fundamental disconnect between rationality and morality and christianity offers an impeccable explanation of why ultimately there is not such a a dichotomy or or a disconnect and that's a marvelous thing because you know siddwick who himself wasn't convinced that god exists but recognized in what he called the dualism of practical reason the challenge associated if there isn't ultimate correspondence between happiness and holiness of course of course emmanuel kant this is a major version of his of his uh one of his versions of the uh moral argument and and then finally the the issue of is holiness even achievable you know can that moral life actually be lived and this is another kantian theme and and of course it's very much connected with that axiomatic deontic principle of thought implies can and uh if it's the case that morality ultimately is simply beyond us how can we say that we ought to live morally and christianity's answer again and this is following someone like say yale's john hare right offers this this wonderful sort of answer yes odd implies can but part of that picture is with god's assistance on our own we can't live up to the moral law but by god's grace we can so by god's grace we can be forgiven and we can be changed and ultimately completely transformed and delivered from the power of sin altogether entirely conformed to the image of christ and all and all the rest so what you have is this really rich cumulative uh picture it seems to me a cameron right we have access to all of these things intrinsic human value authoritative moral obligations the wrathful rationality of of morality um you know an account of how it is that these deep existential moral needs of ours can be met to be forgiven to be changed to be uh perfected what you what you have ultimately in a theistic picture is a robust account of all of these things and what what you can do is say the cumulative effect of them all is powerful so if i were to answer that question what's the best moral argument i'd probably say something like that you know it's a cumulative moral argument that doesn't have to pick and choose between these different parts they're so organically connected that there's something almost artificial to to wrench them apart anyway it seems to me that we don't have to pick and choose in that in that way we've got access to the to the whole so first for yeah first thing that i want to say is that was awesome second thing i want to say is i think that was i think this is a this is a very good uh promo for this class if you want to get more in depth into the moral argument i assume that you're going to go in depth into all of these different aspects of morality and the various ways that they can point to the existence of god so if you want to learn more that's the way to do it because we only got 30 minutes left here and we'll only get you know as far as we can so yeah so if you're interested and you want to get deeper then then check out the class but so that's that's the second thing third thing is dr craig what do you what what is your uh what are your thoughts on what he just said well i liked his appeal to the kantian argument that in order to proportion uh happiness to morality you need god as a guarantor of immortality uh and life beyond the grave because if life ends at the grave as it does on atheism then happiness and and morality are not proportion to each other the the righteous often die young and miserably so that argument i think is really worth emphasizing and then uh dave also mentioned an argument from moral knowledge this is the argument that mark linville presses in the blackwell companion to natural theology when i invited mark to contribute a moral argument for god's existence i was expecting something more along the lines of the argument that i was familiar with but instead he offered a kind of evolutionary argument in favor of theistic ethics and namely that if our uh cognitive faculties are simply the product of blind naturalistic causes then they have been selected for their survival value our beliefs have been selected for their survival value and not for their truth and that makes it very very improbable that our moral beliefs in particular would be reliable even if moral values exist they would be some sort of causally unconnected abstract objects not in time and space and they would have no influence upon us and so how extraordinary it would it would be if just that sort of creature emerged from the blind evolutionary process who had access accurately to this moral realm including what duties and prohibitions he should have and so i think that's a really powerful argument in favor of theism which says that our cognitive faculties have been crafted by god in such a way that we can access these moral truths yeah and i really agree uh mark linville has done such uh tremendous work uh i love mark's work i've been telling him for years that he he's the guy to write the definitive book on the moral argument i think he's he's the man uh yeah he's marvelous and uh everybody should look up his work and you can even find that uh that particular piece uh dr craig was referring to if you just google the moral argument mark linville you can actually find it right on the internet uh very easily accessible well worth reading and that's exactly the kind of thing yeah that we want to do in this class and then in the upcoming certificate program we want to give people a chance to really delve into these rich materials like this and to do it in community together whether we're you know together in person or not uh with technology we can connect all around the world and really build a vibrant dynamic community that uh devotes itself you know to uh using these resources to become equipped to do our evangelism to do our outreach our apologetics uh better so i have one question and then we're going to turn to some audience q a we've already got uh one super chat and we'll get to that in just uh a few minutes here the question is it's related to someone that you brought up david when you were talking richard swinburne a lot of atheists people who reject the moral argument or atheists who at least do so they reject it uh sometimes they'll they'll refer to christian philosophers who reject the moral argument like richard swinburne so what is what is his objection to the moral argument and i know you mentioned that he actually favors a moral an argument for moral knowledge uh which is i think goes to your point about the the accumula case being the case that you wanted that you want to bring but what is his objection and why do people find it persuasive well probably because uh swinburne is a genius and we all recognize that and uh you think man i don't want to disagree with richard swedenburg mark foreman and i some years ago to the eps picked him up from the airport and uh we you know we we drove to to the conference and uh and i was pummeling him with questions about the moral argument you know and and you know by the time he gets done explaining it i mean i i in my head i i kept thinking well surely i i disagree with everything uh that he's saying on this but then you hear that accent and everything and you think i'm out loud i i've got to be wrong how can i possibly be right so it's the accent no i'm just kidding yeah so in his book in his book the existence of god which i just recently uh reread yeah he's got a chapter on uh the moral argument and arguments from consciousness and so that's where people can find it that's on page 192 of this of this version you know in anticipation of you're asking about swinburne i actually reread this uh this morning and uh you know for the life of me i'm completely drawing a blank uh now you know as to as to what his argument is i think he finds it the ontological version uh kind of unpersuasive and i think it's largely connected with his idea that the the necessary truths of morality if such there be uh don't admit of ultimate explanations uh necessary right yeah so it and it's probably connected in that sense with uh dr craig's work you know on uh platonism right it's this notion that if there are these necessary truths then they possess something like a sadie or they exist to say and thus are in no need of uh any anything more ultimate by way of an explanation uh and then but there's a few there are a few ways in which you can go go about addressing this dr craig's is one where he wants to say well look you don't necessarily have to affirm these truths as abstract truths you can root them in something more concrete like that like the nature of god or something like that i don't i don't mean to speak for you dr craig but something along those lines and of course you have the theistic activist approaches which is another sort of uh attempt to say well no there are these abstract truths but you know maybe um there's good reason to think that they are uh you know thoughts in god's mind or something like that and thus sustained by god's activity or some such thing as that personally as a theist i i find implausible the notion that that there would be these necessary truths that exist independently of of god to me that just sort of grates against my sensibilities as a something of a classical theist or probably theistic personalist um so so so i'm unmoved by uh what convinces swinburne and we wrote about this at some length and dr craig has written about it in various places at greater length uh in in various places um i we dealt with it for example in good god uh that so so that was way back when i was uh pondering such things as morris and menzel and planiga's uh how to be an anti-realist and all that sort of thing um but i haven't thought about it in more recent years but i was reminded all of all of that when i looked at swinburne stuff more more recently i think wheeling by go ahead if i could say very quickly just two points i think that richard swinburne assumes uncritically that there cannot be explanations for necessary truths and i think that's not only false i think someone like robert adams has just exploded that notion that certainly necessary truths can stand in relations of explanatory priority to one another the second reason i think that swinburne cannot root morality in god is because he believes that god is a contingent object whereas some moral truths are necessary as dave said richard swinburne has this very peculiar yeah does not exist in every possible world that god is contingent and so given that conception of god it rules out grounding any sort of necessary truths in god yeah right yeah that's that's exactly right um he he'll often refer to in sanguine fashion well these things exist in every possible world what not whether god exists in those worlds or not and and and that sort of language i think be speaks a problem uh yeah because if you think that uh and there are good principle reasons to believe that god's existence is necessary then there is no world in which god does not exist if you're just sort of casually throwing it out there and saying well you've got this necessary truth but it can exist in a world which god doesn't well your job is done i just don't think that argument works yeah i think that's that's exactly right but he does have the accent going for him dr craig you've got to you've got it there's no denying that there's no denying that dave on that note i've actually interviewed him in person and it was the most intimidating experience of my life interviewing him in person and it wasn't because he was trying to be intimidating it was just he's so brilliant he's so it's the accent it's the accent yeah he's very sharp he's very sharp he's he's so sharp okay well let's get to some audience q a so i've got a question that's already been pulled in uh or thrown in earlier so let me go ahead and pull it up on the screen you guys will be able to read it as well but i'll read it out loud for the audience this one is for dr craig moral dilemmas occur here on earth so they must ultimately be discussed debated and solved by subjective human minds does that not make god the objective moral source irrelevant regardless of his existence i don't think so i think this question once again makes the familiar confusion between moral epistemology and moral ontology the claim that there are objective moral values and duties is not the claim that everything is black and white and easy to discern of course there are areas of gray where it's very difficult to discern what our moral duty is in some situation and there we're going to be uh having to debate and discuss and and wrestle with this to try to determine our duties so the claim that there is an objective right and wrong for you to do in a moral situation is not to say that this is easy to discern or clear so don't think that the fact that moral epistemology is something that is sometimes ambiguous unclear vague means that there is no objective truth that we're trying to get at and if i might add yeah exactly along those lines this actually helps address an objection that some people have to theistic ethics in general which is yeah but if you think that morality is rooted in god ultimately then this just entails that you turn your brain off and you consult the rule book and see what god has to say and that's the end of the matter when point of fact of course say uh say say you take a scripture authoritatively we all know that the process of direct exegetical analysis can be very difficult you have to take into account all manner of you know uh considerations culture and context and word studies and and whatnot or take the the idea that god gives us a principle general principle okay but how does that general principle apply to specific situations that that can be hard work to figure that out and sometimes even there might be legitimate disagreement right uh between uh equally professing uh believers uh who who think hard about it and might not always see entirely eye to eye and that's part of the challenge of learning to love your neighbors yourself even when we might not always see uh in you know exact things in exactly the same way so all that to say yeah to be a theistic ethicist in the right sort of way is anything but uh turning off your brain so here's uh just a comment a funny comment from roger sharp he says the best moral argument speak with an accent that's right raj [Laughter] rogers say hi say hi to mary jo for both of us yes all right we just got another super chat in from maverick christian and uh let me go ahead and read this one out again you guys you be able to read it on the screen as well on the deductive moral argument i found that some atheists in practice redefine morality so that moral odds are descriptive for example hypothetical oughts removing the need for god have you found this to be the case well i found this to be the case particularly with sam harris in the debate that i had with him on the foundation of moral values at the university of notre dame what he kept doing was offering sort of hypothetical moral duties for example if you want to promote the flourishing of sentient life then you ought to do this and that and it's no part of uh theistic ethics to deny those sorts of hypothetical judgments for example if you want corn to flourish then you ought to fertilize it and rotate your crops every year those kinds of conditional oughts or obligations are not what we're talking about with regard to moral obligations which are categorical that is to say they're not conditional in that way yes and uh and this applies to any version of the argument that you want to talk about the deductive the inductive the abductive uh evans approach and whatever else this goes back to the the vital importance of close attentiveness to the moral evidence uh yeah again because if you if you're not being sufficiently attentive you might think that you're we're talking about the same thing but you're actually cashing out the significance of moral duties and purely instrumental terms or what have you there's also by the way i think you'd agree dr craig often in someone like sam a confusion of moral and non-moral goods right yeah so oftentimes yeah yeah he'll just talk about you know human flourishing or some such thing and then uh you know cash cash out what what is good for us in in terms like those but of course morality yeah is fundamentally uh prescriptive it's it's normative it's not merely descriptive and there are distinctively moral goods uh so uh we we neglect this to our apparel in our analysis and it lends itself it seems to me to these deflationary analyses that rather than explaining moral facts robustly uh settles for for something distinctly watered down but i think it's just a function of not being sufficiently attentive to the others yeah this is important too with respect to what dave said earlier about defining key moral terms and understanding moral concepts because a concept like goodness for example is used equivocally in a lot of non-moral senses for example uh baylor has a good basketball team you're not talking about the ethics of the team members when you say that or you say chess is a good game again that's not an ethical use of good or this is a good rule to follow um there you've got to make sure that you've got your handle on moral concepts and not uh cheap substitutes for them that's right it wasn't a chesterton who said you could be a good uh shot and and be able to shoot your grandmother but it doesn't make it to be a good shot but not be a we've got a few more questions that have come in we'll try to get to as many as we can jonathan pruitt who i'm sure you you've heard of him uh his he says dr maggot yeah dr baggett what web resources do you recommend on the moral argument well jonathan uh managing editor of more apologetics.com as it happens your very website moralpologetics.com uh is is quite a good resource um i'm sure i'm sure there are others that's only what i want to talk about at the moment well of course there's so much there's so much over to dr craig's site and also on capturing christianity all right here we go russell jones uh russell jones he's one of our supporters he says do either of you find moral obligations are more difficult to explain on naturalism than values that is to say it is one thing if an abstract moral value exists and quite another that it is binding yes this is one of the objections that i raise against atheistic moral platonism as i call it even if you have platonic abstract objects like the good or justice or loyalty or courage um that leaves completely unaddressed the question what obligates me to be just or to be courageous or loyal presumably on this view there are moral vices that exist as abstract objects like lethargy and cruelty so why am i obligated to align my life with one set of these abstract objects rather than another i think it's very difficult to give an account of duties apart from moral imperatives by a qualified authority as dave said now interestingly the way the question is worded uh sort of intimates that it might be more difficult to explain the moral duties and uh dr craig's point uh which i think is an excellent one is suggesting that actually actually there are these powerful theistic resources we have to make full sense of robust moral duties and and in that sense it might be less difficult rather than more difficult to explain the monthism uh but yeah i agree with all that stuff all right here's a question from chad mcintosh he was recently on our channel he's a philosopher and he joined me for a four and a half hour stream where we outlined 155 arguments for god's existence and these are all peer-reviewed arguments and so we provided resources he's he's awesome all right here's his question what are baguettes and craig's thoughts on newman's argument from conscience thanks for the great work and show can i take this one uh yeah so yeah yeah i love john henry newman's work and uh so uh grammar of ascent i would encourage everybody to read it especially chapters five and ten and that's where you're going to find his uh his distinctive uh version of the of the moral argument yeah he and and uh you know he what he wants to say is uh that there's there's good reason to believe that when our conscience is speaking to us uh and it's and it's you know genuinely our conscience properly functioning it's nothing less than the voice of god that's speaking to us and what this enables he thinks is not merely a propositional argument to believe that god exists it actually gives us an opportunity to know god because there is direct experience of god himself in in that he calls the conscience the vicar of christ and things like this and there are numerous uh features of of newman's approach that i find um endlessly fascinating and marvelously perspicacious and um whenever i brag about uh john henry newman uh jerry wells uh wince is you know because he's less a fan of uh some of that but um that the the expanse of epistemology for example that you find in in newman is just tremendous uh he was such a student of uh of epistemology and he recognized for example that when we make a decision it's typically not because of you know one simple syllogism that has convinced us you know usually there are a thousand factors at play and and they're all kind of working on us in in various and sundry ways and uh you know eventually we find ourselves being convinced by something uh right whether whether our conviction that god exists or that there is objective morality or or what have you but he his his whole approach is very true to the complexity of epistemology uh and of the human condition along those lines and i i find his his work just really wonderful along along those lines so i encourage you all to read it i i think his work on conscience along with uh along with a.e taylor's work on conscience if you get get a chance to read that it's so so worth reading faith of a moralist by a.d taylor by the way those two works uh grammar of ascent and faith of a moralist are the two classics that hpo and in the 1960s when he published his book on the moral argument said these are the two most important uh i mean even more than kant he thought uh a taylors faith memorialist uh john henry newman's grammar of ascent and if you sign up with the certificate program at hbu here you're going to have an opportunity to read classics like that uh in community and that's going to be a lot of fun so i'm sure to do that all right we've got a uh this is this is not a question it's a comment from cole young it's uh he's telling a joke here he says well the moral argument fails if doctor if dr craig doesn't show up to the capturing christianity conference in august boom checkmate dr craig so this is actually an opportunity what i'll do is i'll take an opportunity to talk about the conference for two minutes and then we'll come back and and answer one last question so i'll just address the audience real quick so if we are doing a capturing christianity our first conference ever live and in person in august here's the details august 26th the 28th 2021 here's the list of speakers josh rashfordson luke barnes sygart lee strobel liz jackson trent horn alex o'connor he's also known as cosmic skeptic who dr craig has actually had a dialogue with and braxton hunter they'll be debating god's existence this is going to be an awesome conference tickets are on sale right now at our website capturingchristianity.com you can purchase your tickets now early bird price is available that's actually going to end in a couple weeks and spots are going out very quickly so it's a limited thing because we don't know if covid restrictions are still going to be in place by the time this conference is going to happen so spots are just they're flying out the door we've already got one completely sold out one version of the tickets that we've got so yeah that's the conference we have coming up and so let's get back to uh let me get my scene back i've got the i've got the wrong scene up so here's our last question that we'll discuss today and then we'll close it out from robert nas worthington is there a plausible non-theistic explanation for moral duties you want to take that dr craig well the best i thought i've heard was eric wielenberg's normative uh atheistic realism but in the end i i i argued and i i think it's correct to say that it's not plausible in giving us categorical duties to fulfill so i think that this project is not one that the naturalist can can manage what what do you think dave yeah so the word plausible is key right so yes are there other pos possible non-tsc explanations at least epistemically possible sure and are there some on the assumption that this is an atheistic world that would carry some measure of plausibility i i it seems to me that that there are principled reasons for theists to think the answer to that question is is yes and i'll tell you why but then i'll tell you why i think that they're still inadequate right so if we're right as as theists then uh this world exists only because god created it and it's inhabited by creatures like us who are eternal creatures made in god's image so when we say to an atheist hey knock yourself out use the resources of this world to construct your moral theory i don't think they're going to be without resources to come up with some stuff right they have a world right inhabited by eternal creatures made in god's image and you know in a world that is a sustain in its existence by god wouldn't otherwise be able even so much to exist it would almost be shocking if they couldn't come up with with some measure of plausible explanations of certain aspects of morality but you see as an abductivist uh i'm inclined to say but that's all perfectly consistent with a good uh moral argument for god's existence because what we can say is the issue is is not are you implicated in a logical contradiction with every one of your views as a secularist laying out an ethical theory or anything of the kind rather what's the better explanation what's the best explanation so they come up with their explanations by appeal to what resources they have at art at their disposal and by the way we have access to all of those resources ourselves as theists and we have infinitely more because we have god himself a good and and loving god who providentially orders the world and sustains it in its existence and made creatures in his image for a reason for a purpose who loves us and who's imbued us with eternal dignity and value and purpose and make sense of authoritative moral obligations and the full rationality of the enterprise of morality and gives us grace sufficient to be forgiven and changed and transformed perfected um i mean we've got all these resources we can give robust explanations for the full range of things here so on an abductivist account i'm not at all committed to saying there's nothing plausible they can say with respect to morality they can say some things that have a real measure of plausibility i think an image i sometimes use is they can go a certain way down this path of explanation but we can go much farther i think as as christian theists so we've got about 30 seconds let's see if we can get one last question and just get a very short response from both of you from true id apologetics his name is adam coleman he's been on my show he's awesome he says what are the best ways to leverage the moral argument in critiquing errant conceptions of god for example pantheism unitarianism what are your thoughts any quick thoughts i don't think you can leverage it against unitarianism but against pantheism i think that our arguments would require a personal being to be the locus and source of moral values and duties uh and i would encourage you all to read my friend ronnie campbell's book world views and the problem of evil he takes on things like naturalism pantheism pan and theism and so forth he's discussing a particular aspect of the moral evidence in this case the evidence of evil and suffering in this world and he argues that theism considerably better explains uh the existence of this category then do these uh alternate conceptions and by the way last plug the moral argument isn't just about god's existence it's all about who god is as well uh which is wonderful and is one of the most distinctively powerful aspects it seems to me of moral apologetics so last uh you you said you were going to do one last plug but i'm going to do the last plug last plug if you if you if any of this was interesting to you and you want to go deeper then consider taking a class at hbu with dr weimling craig and dr david baggett they're teaching it together one week at a time and they're going to go a deep dive into the moral argument all the the various different aspects more information on that is linked in the description i talked about it earlier but thank you guys for tuning in today and until the next capturing christianity video we will see you later [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Capturing Christianity

Views: 17,782

Keywords: capturing christianity, cameron bertuzzi, apologetics, god, atheism

Id: 7XFkm9CZAR4

Length: 59min 26sec (3566 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021